Re: making up words

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Tuesday 19 March 2002 04:51 pm, Sean M. Burke wrote:
> A question to all language constructors:  once you've settled on the
> phonology and phonotaxis of your language-in-progress, how do you go about
> making up the phonological forms of new words (as opposed to their
> meaning)?
        One technique that I have found handy is to make up words to classical
music. That way, your brain isn't inserting subconsciously thinking of the
"real" words to the latest pop song. I just start singing along, writing down
the words as they come out, not thinking about meaning (that comes later) or
how stupid I must look. (This is one reason I never record myself. YMMV.)
Furthermore, I find that the "atmosphere" of the piece will color the words.
Can you guess how my language sounds if I tell you I listen to (far too much
for my own good) Beethoven, Bach, Wagner, and a slew of Russian composers? :)
        The one problem is that I tend to create a lot of words with a CVCV^n
pattern, without as many consonant clusters as my language ought to enjoy. :)
The solution is to just exterminate with extreme prejudice any extrenuous
vowels.
        Yes, vowels flee in my presence...
        (I'm not quite as bad as, say, Georgian, however. Georgian is downright
genocidal with its vowels. I mean, what language could be so cruel as to
produce a word like "gvprckvnis"? I suppose the "v"s and "r"s are syllabic,
but still...)

> Do you use a random number generator?
        I've tried this, and one of these days I'm going to try to write an improved
version, but for every good word that a word generator creates, I have to
throw out at least five. On the other hand, a word generator is good when you
think that all the words are starting to sound too much alike.

> Or just play it by ear?
        In the end, all words must pass the ear test, no matter how they are formed.
        :Peter

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org

iD8DBQE8l/hyevbW9GDdlVARAo6XAJ9gVbHF8D+NIFyRi/gTXII5/VAsawCgr+RR
3IbP5sU3zgPZLAVMKk1T7Rk=
=0wHR
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Replies